(Photo By Laura Bly, USAToday)
The death of author Peter Mayle came as a shock to me as I learned about it several weeks after the fact.
While all the major publications (such as USA Today, Washington Post, and the Guardian) did their duty and wrote up very professional obituaries, I could not help feeling that something was missing from these published accounts. Clearly, obituary writers can only do so much with immediate deadlines to adhere to, limited time, and space constraints.
Occasionally, I have read prefaces by authors who salute their readers. So, why shouldn’t a reader salute an author? It’s the least a reader can do. My only regret is that my timing is too late for the author to appreciate the sentiment.
I have never written a tribute to an author before, but the time has come to apply my hand to the trade. As a reader, Mayle’s books on Provence (Southern France) and the French made a deep impression on me and many others.
Simply put, there are several reasons why I’d like to pay tribute to Mayle as an author:
1) Peter Mayle actually wrote about how he enjoyed life and he shared this joy with his readers. Very few authors have a knack for bringing us back to the basic fact that life itself is a gift. Life is short, so we best enjoy it.
Mayle was able to find enjoyment in life’s little pleasures that many of us either take for granted or ignore amid the busyness of the world. Although Mayle mainly described Provence as the best venue for food and wine, good weather, pleasant conversation with neighbors, having a long lunch, and taking a siesta; these are things that we actually all have access to for our enjoyment. An open mind to these seemingly small gifts doesn’t require anything other than slowing down and savoring them.
2) Mayle wrote award winners in both non-fiction and fiction, which not many authors can pull off. His non-fiction best seller A Year in Provence, was made into a BBC film series. His novel, A Good Year, was made into a movie.
3) Mayle’s use of humor was prevalent throughout his books and always made for a good natured laugh. His book, A Dog’s Life, was a memoir written entirely from the perspective of his dog, named Boy! On pages 140-141 we see an example of this humor:
“As I may have mentioned, I do like to have something to chew when the mood takes me, live preferably, but that involves catching it first, and for some reason it’s not too popular with the management. And so, faute de mieux, I usually have to make do with an inanimate object such as a stick, the Labrador’s blanket, or a guest’s shoe. Dull pickings, for the most part, although I did manage to get hold of a child’s teddy bear once. It didn’t put up much of a fight, I have to say, and there were tearful recriminations over the remains, much wailing and gnashing of teeth, followed by solitary confinement for the winner. The stuffing gave me a bilious attack, too. Everything these days are man-made fibers, which I can tell you are highly indigestible. If you’ve ever eaten squid in a cheap Italian restaurant, you’ll know what I mean. It was shortly after the teddy bear incident that I was given my first tennis ball, and I took to it immediately. Round, springy, and small enough to carry in one side of the mouth while barking from the other, it was my constant companion for weeks.”
4) I could read Mayle’s books multiple times and get the same enjoyment out of them as I did the first time I read them.
Here are just a few of my favorite passages from Mayle’s works:
Enjoying a Sunny Day and the Weather
Toujours Provence pages 38-39:
“June in Provence is unpredictable and sometimes wet. But when I woke and went out into the courtyard, the seven o’clock sky was a never-ending blue, the color of a Gauloise packet. The flagstones were warm under my bare feet, and our resident lizards had already taken up their sunbathing positions, flattened and motionless against the wall of the house. Just to get up to a morning like this was enough of a birthday present. The beginning of a hot summer day in the Luberon, sitting on the terrace with a bowl of café crème, the bees rummaging in the lavender, and the light turning the forest to a dark burnished green, is better than waking up suddenly rich.”
Toujours Provence page 232:
“We no longer watch television. It wasn’t a self-righteous decision to give us time for more intellectual pursuits; it simply happened. In the summer, watching television can’t begin to compare with watching the evening sky. In the winter, it can’t compete with dinner. The television set has now been relegated to a cupboard to make space for more books.”
Taking Time to Enjoy Daily Life
Encore Provence page 11:
“It’s true that time in Provence is not worshipped in quite the same way as it is in more hectic parts of the world, and it took me a week or two to bow to the inevitable and put my watch away in a drawer. But while there is no great importance given to time in the sense of punctuality, there is an enormous relish of the moment. Eating, obviously. Conversation on a street corner. A game of boules. The choosing of a bunch of flowers. Sitting in a café. Small pleasures receive their due, and there is an absence of rush-sometimes infuriating, often delightful, and in the end contagious. I realized this when I went into town on an errand that need only have taken fifteen minutes, and came back two and a half hours later. I had done absolutely nothing of any importance, and I had enjoyed every minute of it.”